Simplicity - Just a word?

The meaning of life is simple, if you choose to let it be.

How searching can consume you

Image by Author

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash — one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone. To the egoic self, this is a depressing thought. To you, it is liberating.
Stillness Speaks — Eckhart Tolle

Over the couple of decades I’ve read 3/4 of all the articles and books.
In order to become mindful and live in the present moment, in order to be a writer; you will find a zillion sources, without trying hard.
Authors of good books range from Lao Tzu, Ramana Mahashari, Alan Watts, even Ray Bradbury, through to Rupert Spira, Eckart Tolle and a few others still writing today.

I love this Passage in Letting Go by DAVID R. HAWKINS, M.D., PH.D. especially in the audible version.
Here is a short piece of it. Be aware that this goes on and on over six such paragraphs.

Go on a retreat. Try fasting. Take amino acids. Get a negative ion generator. Join a mystery school. Learn a secret handshake. Try toning. Try color therapy. Try subliminal tapes. Take brain enzymes, antidepressants, flower remedies. Go to health spas. Cook with exotic ingredients. Look into strange fermented oddities from faraway places. Go to Tibet. Hunt up holy men. Hold hands in a circle and get high. Renounce sex and going to the movies. Wear some yellow robes. Join a cult.

Hawkins, David R.. Letting Go (p. 3). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

The point I want to make here is; just as in writing well, you can easily find enough to read — and reread — until life has passed you by and you feel you are no closer to a goal than you were when you started. The reason is simple; Your starting point IS the goal.

There is a parallel between writing, and being what you truly are.

In order to be a writer, you must simply sit down and write.
In order to be who — or what — you truly are, you must simply be that.

I wish to examine — with you — 3 questions:
Are the two phrases just empty platitudes?
Why is the word simply set apart from the rest?
Is it really that easy to stop reading and begin being, or writing?

Let us begin with the first question; empty platitudes.
Ask any writer you choose, contact them however you like and ask them whether they agree with the the statement ‘to be a writer you must write’.

Writers write. This cannot be denied.
Ray Bradbury gives 3 words of advice — or 4 if you are technically inclined — Work, Relax, don’t think.
That first word tells you exactly the same thing as writers write. Work
So, unless you have the killer argument, there is only one possible way to be a writer. You write, end of game, end of search. What you write is up to you. Be it published or not, just write.

What about being who and what you are? An empty phrase?
Well, look at this way; if you meditate every day 60 minutes than are you not being who you are?
If you think you must meditate every morning, but are not doing it, are you not likewise being who you are?
What applies to meditation also applies to all the other gazillion things you can do when searching for enlightenment.
If you want to do this, that and the other thing, but instead are struggling to understand and develop mindfulness habits, you are still being you!

What about the word emphasized above; simply?
Simply sit down and write.
Simply be who you are.

Where — exactly — is the difficult part for you? What makes you balk at the word simply?
I will suggest; the difficulty you experience is the search.
If you are still reading every book on being, still reading “Mindfulness in 4 easy steps…” ad absurdum than you are still searching for magic words.
Of course, you can also replace the topic of mindfulness with writing. “How to write in 3 easy steps…” again, ad absurdum. Searching…

Is searching in vain?
I am still open to answers on that; for me personally the searching was necessary in order to realize that the search is not a necessity.
I still read my favorite writers who offer up “4 steps to mindfulness” or “Becoming a world class writer in 30 days” because I enjoy it, not because I am searching.

So, if you allow me to tell you, the word simply is justified. 
Simply be who you are. Simply sit and write. Otherwise, continue searching - which is another word for procrastination; which means fear.
One day, you may discover the truth that the search is over.

Is it really that easy to stop reading and begin being, doing?
Actually, if we agree that the second statement is not just a phrase without meaning, we should also agree that this phrase is true.
Allow me to expand.

It is easy to simply sit and write. If there is any advice to be taken it is found in the words of Ray Bradbury and Dorothea Brande.

WORK· It’s quite obvious that both men were working.
And work itself, after awhile, takes on a rhythm. The mechanical begins to fall away. The body begins to take over. The guard goes down. What happens then?

RELAXATION· And then the men are happily following my last advice:

DON’T THINK· Which results in more relaxation and more unthinkingness and greater creativity.

Zen in the Art of Writing — Ray Bradbury

These two strange and arbitrary performances — early morning writing, and writing by prearrangement, on a schedule — should be kept up till you write fluently at will.

Becoming a Writer — Dorothea Brande

Ray is telling us that we can write, work and get into the flow of writing after a certain time has passed.
Dorothea is saying that if we can master the 2 habits; Early morning writing and writing 15 very short minutes on schedule, we will succeed over time.
Persistence is the key.

Can you just follow this advice? I am sure, if you have read this far, you certainly can.
More important; you can easily.

So it is easy to simply write.

Is it easy to be who you truly are?
I have been blessed in the past 15–20 years with many experiences.
The experiences I speak of are great feelings of oneness, joy, peace and being the witness.

Alan Watts offers a nice description of this emotional high.

If I may put it in a way which is horribly cumbersome and inadequate, that fleeting glimpse is the perception that, 
suddenly, some very ordinary moment of your ordinary everyday life, lived by your very ordinary self, just as it is and just as you are — 
that this immediate here-and-now is perfect and self-sufficient beyond any possibility of description.

You know that there is nothing to desire or seek for — that no techniques, no spiritual apparatus of belief or discipline is necessary, no system of philosophy or religion.

The goal is here. 
It is this present experience, just as it is. 
That, obviously, is what the finger was pointing at. 
Watts, Alan W.. Become What You Are (p. 14). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

Emphasis added.

After being the witness for hours over a 3 day period — it came and went — I tried desperately to repeat it. I searched, analyzed and read. I meditated, sought my inner child and wept. This went on for about 4 months before I realized all the other stuff I had also read over the years.

Simply being your true nature is not about great emotional highs, it is not about searching for enlightenment. 
What it is about; being yourself, warts and all; being aware of that and saying ‘I am’.
Not I am…the witness. I am…enlightened. I am…the thinker, doer. I am…fill in the blank.

My Witness experience was about 6 years ago and I no longer desire or search for that.
I am. You are.
Without progress, without path, without spiritual goal.
You are.

What more could you possibly want? What else could you possibly be?

So my friend, I say yes, it is easy to simply be who you are.

Thanks for reading.